UT's Irby returns after battling injury for years

Updated 1:45 am, Friday, August 26, 2011

Photo: Victor Calzada, FRE

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Texas receiver Blaine Irby catches a touchdown pass during the second quarter of their NCAA college football game Saturday Sept. 6, 2008 at the Sun Bowl Stadium in El Paso, Texas. (AP Photo/Victor Calzada)

Texas receiver Blaine Irby catches a touchdown pass during the second quarter of their NCAA college football game Saturday Sept. 6, 2008 at the Sun Bowl Stadium in El Paso, Texas. (AP Photo/Victor Calzada)

Photo: Victor Calzada, FRE

UT's Irby returns after battling injury for years

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AUSTIN - It just wouldn't listen.

For more than a year, hundreds of times per day, Blaine Irby pleaded with his foot to move. He pushed on it. Massaged it. Prayed over it.

Nothing.

He'd tried unfettered, near-delusional positivity. He'd endured excruciating moments of frustration. He'd look down at his foot in the weight room, in class, or at his bedside and try to squeeze his brain hard enough to make the waves travel down his body and through his mangled knee and at least give him a wiggle.

But the foot didn't budge.

Then one day in December 2009, in a meeting room where Texas' more able-bodied tight ends were watching tape in preparation for the Bowl Championship Series title game, Irby felt a twitch.

His mind racing and heart pounding, he calmly raised his hand and asked to be excused. Shortly thereafter, Irby's close friend, Longhorns safety Blake Gideon, saw him in the hallway.

"He had this smile on his face," Gideon said. "Like he had a secret to tell me."

The secret was a bombshell. The man who doctors said would never walk normally was going to play football again.

Irby let himself watch the replay only once. He remembers enough about the night of Sept. 20, 2008, as it is.

In the third quarter of a UT victory over Rice at Royal-Memorial Stadium, the Longhorns lined up on third down and ran a play called 27 Naked Ohio. Irby, then an athletic, highly touted sophomore tight end, blocked the defensive tackle for a quick count, then ran into the right flat. Quarterback Colt McCoy fired a pass into his hands.

The last thing Irby remembers is "a white object" moving quickly toward his legs. That object was Rice defensive back Christopher Douglas, who hit Irby so hard that Kenny Boyd, UT's head athletic trainer, would later say it was as if Irby's knee "dropped off the shelf."

Boyd knew right away how devastating the injury was, describing it as "limb-threatening." Only gradually did Irby understand that.

"I remember screaming a little bit, but I was in shock," Irby said.

When UT coach Mack Brown made it to Irby's side, he couldn't hide the anguished look on his face.

"(Irby) looked up and said, 'It's bad, isn't it?' " Brown said.

It was. Not only was Irby's knee dislocated, his ACL, LCL, meniscus, cartilage and muscle tendons were shredded. Even worse, he suffered significant nerve damage.

Twitch of hope

Over the next 26 months, Irby would require three surgeries. At one point, he was given less than a 5 percent chance of walking normally again. He suffered from foot drop, a condition resulting from the damaged nerves, and couldn't walk without a huge splint.

He kept showing up at the weight room every morning, kept going to every team meeting, and was relentless in his rehab, but no one at UT expected him to play again. In the fall of 2009, he finally started to accept his football career was over.

Then came the twitch.

It was a positive sign, one that Irby said made him "ecstatic." Still, Boyd cautioned him.

"There's a long way to go from feeling that twitch and being able to block a defensive end," Boyd said.

But however long it took, there was now a path, and Irby was determined to follow it.

"I always knew in my heart I would come back," he said.

Almost three years after the injury, after the surgeries and hundreds of hours of rehab, and after convincing Brown to let him play despite the coach's protestations that he should be more concerned about being able to play with his children someday, Irby stood in a huddle at practice.

It was his first play since he was cleared for full-contact workouts. At the request of tight ends coach Bruce Chambers, the quarterback uttered nine familiar syllables: Twenty-seven Naked Ohio.

After running the route, Irby jogged past Chambers.

"He looked at me and said, 'Thanks, Coach,' " Chambers said.

No more kid gloves

Because they'd seen him overcome so much, UT defenders were hesitant at first to treat Irby like a normal target.

"Everybody kind of holds their breath any time he goes up for a ball," Gideon said. "That first week of camp, the Red Sea would part."

Infuriated, Irby warned his teammates if they didn't hit him, he'd hit them first. Now bulked up at 6-3, 237 pounds, the Camarillo, Calif., native has convinced everyone he can handle himself and is expected to be one of UT's top tight ends.

On Sept. 3, he'll take the field at Royal-Memorial Stadium against Rice, but it won't be like it was three years ago. He'll be wiser and stronger.

"You can say it was a tragic incident," Irby said. "But in a way, it was a blessing in disguise."